Online Military and Veteran Students
The charge of this Community of Practice is to pull together, in a collaborative manner, expertise and interest from across the University to focus on attracting and retaining the military and veteran community. The members will collaborate to define issues and opportunities - including areas of student services, financial support, marketing, programs, and policies - and make recommendations to better serve current and prospective online military-affiliated students at the University of Nebraska.

Name

Campus

Title

E-mail

Tami Fosher

UNK

Online Coordinator

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Scott Fredrickson

UNK

Professor

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Mary Sommers

UNK

Director, Financial Aid

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Robert Mathiasen

UNL

Adviser/Assistant Director Undergraduate Programs

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Meghan Moore

UNMC

Financial Aid Associate

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Maggie Winnicki

UNMC

DE Admin Coordinator

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Channing Bunch

UNMC

Dir., Recruitment & Student Engagement

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Leah Meyer

UNO

Veterans Coordinator

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Javier Saldana

UNO

Assistant Veterans Coordinator

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Molly Cowgill

UNO

Manger, DCS Offutt Office

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Michael Connolly

UNO

Interim Director, MaV USO

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Abby Freeman

UNL

Operations Manager

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Jill Bertsch

NUOW

Senior Marketing Coordinator

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Todd Karr

NUOW

Assistant Director

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Laura Wiese

NUOW

Marketing Director

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The charge of this Community of Practice is to make recommendations on the use of technology and technology software to improve the ability of faculty and staff to develop and offer online courses, and to support student centered distance education services. This is an essential component of successful online programs.

The charge of this Community of Practice is to evaluate student services, define issues and assist in facilitating needed change. To a large extent, the University of Nebraska distance education student services have been developed in the same fashion as its bricks-and-mortar programs and are reliant on existing on-campus services and staff hours. This can be challenging for the student in that a large number of online students do their course work at nighttime and on the weekends. Making it more convenient for distance education students to access essential IT and other support services at times that work for them is important in that a majority of adult learners are trying to fit their courses into an already busy schedule. While the focus of Online Worldwide is attracting new off-campus distance education students, the distance education service must facilitate policies and procedures to accommodate seamless access of off-campus students, on-campus students, on-campus students at other campuses and high school students taking college online courses.

The charge of this Community of Practice is to address faculty support issues, training needed and quality standards. The Online Learning as a Strategic Asset Volume I: A Resource for Campus Leaders, August 2009, Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities study reported, that campus leaders should consider such issues as adequacy of resources and support for faculty training and development, recognition of the additional time and effort it takes to develop and teach online courses, and faculty concerns about online learning outcomes. Other key issues reported, by the study, are professional support for course design and delivery, faculty incentives for development and delivery of online content, and institutional polices concerning intellectual property. Online learning programs cannot meet stated campus strategic goals without an engaged and supportive faculty.

Faculty and staff from the four campuses involved in distance education programs will be invited to join one or more Communities of Practice, giving them a voice in strategic developments related to instructional design and faculty support, infrastructure and systems, student services, and grants. Community of Practice members are appointed by the Director of Online Worldwide in consultation with the campus Distance Education Directors.